The real voter fraud

North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District may be a long ways from here, but the lessons it has provided in recent days about election fraud have implications far beyond the Tar Heel State.

Election officials in North Carolina threw out the narrow victory in November of a Republican congressional candidate, Mark Harris, after it was shown that Harris bankrolled a shady political operative accused of masterminding a large-scale absentee ballot fraud. Particularly damning for Harris, who has since opted not to run in the new election, was the testimony of his own son, a federal prosecutor, that he had warned his father not to engage the services of the operative, Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr. Dowless and four of his associates were charged in the scam.

This case underscores that for all the emphasis on voter ID to prevent impersonation at polling places, and for all the kudos Mississippi received for implementing voter ID so smoothly, that’s not where elections are stolen. Almost in all cases where results are tainted, it’s been because of fishy absentee ballot totals.